The Rider, the Steed, and the Girl
by redwallanderson
Summary: A lone rider finds himself wrapped up in the charms of a lady, in the midst of the post-apocalyptic world ruled by flesh-eating zombies.
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE** (?)

The horse reared, neighing painfully as it stepped into a pothole in the middle of the road and then jerked itself out before it could panic and break its leg. The rider, a hard-faced young man with matted blonde hair and baby blue eyes, let a cold smile show briefly on his lips at his mount's tenacity.

The Rider himself was a good-looking boy: son of a reverend and a lawyer, good genes instilled in him. He probably would have been even more handsome if he hadn't had bags under his eyes from lack of sleep and from stress and if his hair hadn't been caked with mud and dried blood, and he smelled to high heaven from a mixture of old blood and intestines splattered all over his clothes and the stomach of his horse where it appeared he'd been wading through a pool of rotting bodies. This was far from what had truly happened. But that was beside the point . . .

The Rider stopped the horse and looked around silently. There was no one in sight, and it appeared that the town was deserted, just like nearly every town on the face of the earth. It was a ghost town. The young rider gave a humorless chuckle and swung himself down from the rough leather saddle of the horse, boots landing with an authorative thump on the cracked asphalt. He ran his rough palm over the horse's coat affectionately before tying its reins to the fender of a rusty old wreck that had once been a school bus, from the looks of it.

He walked away from the tethered horse, appearing to be deep in thought as he stepped up on the sidewalk. He didn't appear to care about the deserted town at all, and didn't appear to be worried about being attacked by whatever had made the town the way it was now. He just marched through the rubble-cluttered doorway of the former franchise restaraunt and sighed, gazing around at what had once been one of the most popular places for humanity to dine. There was a sadness in his eye that couldn't really be explained as he looked downwards and nudged what appeared to be a very old, stained burger bun with the tip of his boot.

Outside, the city was suddenly filled with noise where before it had been bone chillingly quiet. The Rider sighed. There was always a small group of survivors that just **had** to try and steal the horse. He turned calmly and walked to the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, and watched the scruffy-looking teenage girl struggling to untie the complex knot in which the rider had tethered the horse to the school bus with. Another scruffy teenager, this one a boy, was standing nearby holding what seemed to be a 12-gauge shotgun. He nearly crapped his pants when he saw the Rider in the doorway, and he raised the shotgun, apparently trying to intimidate the other man.

The Rider laughed. "Why isn't your gun loaded?" he asked with a twinkle of amusement in his blue eyes. "Should I be scared of an empty gun? Please put it down before I grow impatient and shoot you. Hurry it up." The boy hastily laid the shotgun down and stood with his hands up. "Back up, over by your sister or your girlfriend or whoever the fuck she is." The Rider drew his pistol and cocked it for emphasis and the boy quickly obeyed, the girl also holding her hands up as they stood by the school bus and waited to be executed, as was the usual crime for trying to steal a horse in the post-apocalypse world they now lived in.

"We meant no harm," the girl said bravely, her green eyes blazing in defiance. She was beautiful, even if her red hair was cut boyishly short and her face purposefully smudged so she would appear more male in case raiders caught her and decided she was a little too pretty to be left alone. In the Rider's opinion, you couldn't mask that kind of beauty no matter how hard you tried. "We just wanted to hurry up and steal your horse before one of the monsters came along . . . "

The Rider chuckled. "Next time, try and point a **loaded** shotgun. Thankfully, I'm in a relatively good mood, so you two will live for there to be a next time." He stepped off the sidewalk and approached the pair, pistol still aimed at them but he hadn't ever really intended to shoot them unless he had to. "Stand exactly where you are, while I untie my horse and mount it and then I'm going to ride away and you are going to get to live, though you'll be still minus a horse as usual. Do you understand?"

The girl smiled sweetly, batting her eyelashes. So much like a woman, trying to flirt her way to safety with the 'knight in shining armor' or just the man with a gun and with the horse. "You young men and your macho crap," she tssked. "Just take me and Adam with you."

The Rider hesitated. He rarely hesitated but he did at that moment. "I will take one of you and one of you only," he said firmly, obviously hoping he was going to get to take the girl.

The boy never faltered. He turned to the girl and hugged her. "I'll take my chances out here, Liza. You go with this guy. Don't worry about me. I've survived this long without this jerk's help, right?" He kissed her cheek gently.

She nodded and the Rider had to admire her, because she barely showed a hint of a tear in her eye even though he could tell it was hard for her to leave her brother or boyfriend or whoever this guy was. "Don't do anything stupid," she ordered shortly before swinging up into the saddle behind the Rider and not looking back. The Rider kicked his steed into a gallop and soon they were out of sight of the boy.

After they had turned the corner away from the girl's former companion, the Rider reined the horse in to a stop and turned around in the saddle to look the girl in the eye solidly. "Who was he?"

"My fiance," she answered back, and this time a tear did leak down her cheek.

"Fine, okay." The Rider urged the horse on and soon they were once again galloping spiritedly down the street. _Stop listening to your dick_, he thought anxiously. _You should just drop the girl off right fucking now. She's hot, sure . . . But she'll only fucking slow you down._ But he just kept going. And the girl stayed on the back of that horse, for damn sure.

They had reached the other end of town by the time night fell. The Rider stopped the horse in the street and dismounted, eyes alert and pistol drawn. He was noticeably more careful at night, because that when . . . Well, that was when the zombies came out more often. Yes, zombies. The Rider gazed around at the surrounding buildings, obviously trying to calculate which one would be best to hole up in for the night. He had to take into account which buildings would have space enough. Usually he only had to account for him and the horse. But now the girl had been added to the equation and hopefully she'd be worth it.

The Rider spotted a bookstore that looked big enough and led the horse across to it quietly, the girl still sitting in the saddle calmly. It wasn't until they reached the door of the book store that the Rider realized she had fallen asleep sitting up. He smiled softly and picked the sleeping beauty gently out of the saddle and carried her into the store, laying her down on the counter while he set up a pallet of blankets that he took from the saddlebags and then he laid her down on that. He led the horse across the bookstore's length and let it lay in a comfortable space he cleared of debris and fallen books, before tethering it to a railing there.

As he walked back towards the sleeping girl and shut the bookstore's door as best he could and secured it, the Rider stared grimly at several bloody handprints all over the store that told its brutal history from when the outbreak started a while ago. While the girl slept, the Rider stayed up and aimed the gun at the doorway protectively, never tiring apparently.

--

The girl awoke to the sight of the Rider sitting beside her, still aiming the pistol, eyes wide open and completely awake. She was shocked. "What's up with you?" she yawned, stretching tiredly and gazing around in surprise at his choice of shelter. She looked amused as she picked up a torn copy of Harry Potter lying nearby and then tossed it away.

"I do not sleep unless someone else stays up and covers me," he answered shortly, finally uncocking the pistol and stuffing it in his holster once more and standing up. "I haven't lived this long to be bit by some lowdown zombie just because I wanted to catch some zs. We move in half an hour. Hurry up and fix something for us to eat. Bando eats, too, or you don't eat . . . " He blinked at her when she said nothing. "That's what you're here for. To cook. Now cook. And by the way, Bando's my horse . . . And my name is Jay."

The girl was silent for a moment. "I'm Liza. And if I have to cook to survive and get out of this shithole town full of zombies . . . I guess that's the least I can do for you . . . " She flashed a smile at him that seemed only half enthusiastic and walked towards the saddle bags that the Rider . . . that Jay had laid on the counter.

Jay grinned softly to himself and ran a hand through his matted hair and for the first time since before the outbreak had began, he thought to himself: _I really need a shower. And a haircut, as well._ _Why now, though?_ He knew perfectly well why. The girl was cute, and he was sweet on her already. He shook it off quickly. "There's some canned stuff in the saddlebags. I managed to raid it from some store in another town farther east of here . . . There's also two large water canteens in there. One is for us. The other is for Bando. Give that to him, along with the bag of hay." Jay sighed deeply. "I am so glad this is a hick town in the middle of nowhere, plenty of farms to steal that hay shit off of, you know?"

Liza listened silently as she prepared the food. "You do know we can't eat right now? We've got to get somewhere that I can make a fire, you understand that, right? And your horse -- Bandit, or whatever -- would probably like to be out in the open when he eats, instead of in this cramped nerd hangout . . . And another thing--" She was cut off as there was a long, low moan outside and dragging footsteps on the concrete sidewalk.

Jay sshed her and drew the pistol back out very slowly, eyes glued to the secured door. Liza nodded in understanding and pulled a knife out of the saddlebags where it was concealed, just in case the zombie outside somehow got past the pistol. There was silence except for the unmistakable sound of rotting hands trying to shove open the door of the bookstore -- and then succeeding.

Jay didn't even wait to get a good look at the zombie: he just fired and knocked it back through the door with a bullet to the neck and then another to the gut, and the zombie toppled off the sidewalk and revealed the group of oncoming undead -- over a dozen zombies, at least -- approaching from all over the street. "Time to go," Jay said quickly. "Pack the stuff, untie Bando and follow me." Without looking back at Liza, he ran out the door, weaving expertly through the small group of zombies and whistling loudly for Bando.

The horse came running through the door of the bookstore after Liza untied him, bowling the zombies down like ninepins. At this point, Jay was sure that they had to get out of the city entirely and move on to one of the next abandoned ghost towns. He just hoped they would be able to escape this one. He swung up onto Bandit's back. "Let's get the hell out of here!" he yelled towards the bookstore -- that was his way of telling her to hurry the fuck up.

Liza came barrelling out of the store, carrying the saddle bags over her shoulder to leave her hands free to hold the knife. She gave a zombie a slice across the face and kicked it backwards before Jay lifted her up behind him on the back of the horse. Jay kicked the horse into a gallop and they made their way through the zombie mob as fast as they could, Liza kicking the zombies away when she had the chance.

When they were about four miles outside of town, Jay finally let Bando slow down to a walk as they were passing through a farmer's field and the two humans dismounted. "Try to rustle something up," Jay commanded as he gave a look of eager wanting towards the saddle bags. "Maybe some canned stuff? Bando's fine out here. I'll let him graze or something. Try not to let zombies sneak up on us and I'm going to take a nap while you cook." He laid down on the hard, bare ground and was nearly instantly asleep.

Liza felt her anger rising. She was a very defiant young woman, but she tried to keep her feelings in check. After all, he had taken her in when he didn't have to. She looked towards Bando and patted the animal's matted coat gently before getting to work.

Meanwhile, across the field in the farmer's house, hungry and greedy eyes watched, huddled around the window so they could all see. Those gazes caressed Liza's womanly curves and tongues licked lips. But one was not so sure about the whole plan their leader had cooked up . . .

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" the young man asked nervously from the shadows. He was standing away from the window and seemed embarassed by the obvious sexual desire of his comrades being directed towards the woman bending over and preparing food across the field.

The leader turned around, eyes narrowing and lust leaving them to be replaced by annoyance. "Those two survivors are a gold mine, fool," he declared. "And we're gonna be cutting their trip short . . . They have a horse, food, guns, everything . . . Especially the purty little thing there . . . " He licked his lips again. "Fine piece of . . . " He trailed off, rambling to himself.

The young man who had expressed his doubt of the plan stood there, guilt-ridden. He eventually subdued the feelings of doubt and firmly grasped his shotgun. They were going to go ahead with the plan... Two hours passed and then the plan commenced..

"Lunch break!" Liza joked, setting down the food in front of Jay as he yawned and stretched and gave a tired smile of thanks to her. Bando was lying lazily on the ground nearby, stuffed full of hay and content. Jay reached for a fork at the same time as Liza did and their hands touched and they stared into each other's eyes for a moment. Jay's gaze held nothing but embarassment, but Liza's eyes were mischevious and twinkling.

Jay started to get up from where he was sitting cross-legged on the ground eating. That's when he heard a distinctive clicking noise and he turned to Liza, eyes wide in disbelief. They locked gazes and Liza understood, throwing herself prone as gunfire opened up from all sides. No bullets were aimed for Liza or Bando, however . . . They were all aimed for Jay.

He grunted as he was shot in the right arm first and toppled backwards, blood spraying everywhere. Men materialized from the darkness, one of them walking right past Liza without a second glance, blasting a pump-action shotgun toward where Jay was scrambling to his feet, others firing at him as well. Jay yelped as he was shot in the belly, but this time he didn't fall. He pulled out a handgun with his left hand and began firing. Even with multiple gunshot wounds, the Rider was still dangerous. The man with the shotgun shrieked like a damned soul as he was hit twice in the right abdomen and stumbled to his knees, the shotgun flying away. Liza kicked him down and grabbed the shotgun desperately and aimed it at another nearby gunman and put several rounds of '00 buckshot into the bastard. Jay saw this and grinned . . . and then another bullet slammed into his shoulder, and he dropped the half-empty pistol and fell to his knees in defeat and then rolled over face-down and motionless.

The men stood around Jay, congratulating each other on taking out the infamous Rider that roamed the ghost towns in the area and was notoriously hard to kill. Too bad they forgot about Liza . . . She walked up behind them and emptied both barrels into the back of one and tossed the shotgun aside, rage filling her beautiful features. The other two turned quickly and pulled their triggers, but Bando galloped in front of Liza, taking the bullets. The steed toppled with a heart-piercing shriek of agony.

Liza grabbed up the pistol Jay had dropped, aiming at one of the men over the body of Bando and shot him between the eyes. The other was running for cover when Liza shot him in the back. She knelt by Bando, patting the horse's heaving sides. He had been struck high on his flank by the bullet, and it looked like a flesh wound. He wasn't going to die. She kissed his nose lovingly and whispered to him that it was all going to be okay, before turning quietly towards where Jay lay.

And of course that was when he rolled over, holding another pistol, his eyes darting around for any of the gunmen and ready to kill them. He saw only Liza standing there covered in the blood of the gunmen, holding a pistol with the slide locked back and empty. He laughed weakly, laying his head back on the grass, breathing deeply in and out and trying not to scream from the pain.

Liza knelt by him with a gentle smile with hidden meaning in it, eyes mischevious. "Want a ride, cowboy?"


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

Jay stared at his female companion with a comically befuddled expression for a long moment, and then he smiled, sly as a snake. "Yeah, right," was his only reply to Liza as he tried to sit up but she held him down with a gentle yet firm grip. He started to protest but she gave him a hard stare and he obeyed. When she was sure he wasn't going to try and get up, she went to attend to Bando's wound.

The horse was uncomplaining about the bullet wound even though he had been doubled over in pain just moments before. He was a brave horse. Liza kissed his nose affectionately as she inspected the steed. He had been hit in the left shoulder and it had gone in and then out of his flesh. Ultimately, the horse had taken three bullets in separate places and had survived. He was going to live. Liza just wished she had some tranquilizers or . . . anything, to help her calm the horse down or sedate it while she bandaged or stitched the wounds.

She was about to start bandaging the horse's shoulder wound when she heard an all too familiar loud moaning noise and jerked a little, turning around really fast. Everybody that had survived after the outbreak knew that sound too well. It signaled that at least one zombie was approaching. Liza turned and methodically began trying to Bando very quickly, with gentle but urgent fingers.

Jay's lips twisted into an amused smile as he watched Liza take care of his horse, but since he was smiling through the immense pain radiating through every cell of his body, the smile looked more like a grimace. He knew that the zombies were coming closer and closer with every second and they had to get the fuck out of Dodge, had to leave immediately. The problem was, Jay was critically wounded, as was Bando. They weren't going anywhere really fast at the moment.

Liza finally turned away from Bando, frustrated and frightened. "He's not going to be able to walk, much less gallop, for at least a while," she answered, her sweaty face worried as she scanned the darkness around them for any signs of the zombies. Jay could hear her frantic breathing even from where he lay. He didn't want to die, so he thought of an idea, on the spot.

"Let's head for the farmhouse," he said, nodding quietly at the farmhouse across the long-barren Pennsylvania farm field. "Surely, we'll be safe there. It's already boarded up and all that shit . . . Looks like the door is open, but that's about it." He shrugged his shoulders. "Better than sitting out here in the open, eh?"

Liza nodded and she decided something right there. "I-I'll take you first because Bando . . . Zombies don't eat horses, so he'll be fine out here for a moment. I'm gonna carry you to the house . . . Or try to carry you . . . . I'll find . . . some way to carry Bando." She put the pistol in her waistband and took a very deep breath. She grabbed Jay up in a fireman's carry and began stumbling towards the farmhouse, nearly crumpling under his superior weight, her knees trembling.

Her eyes searched the dark around them for zombies and she was rewarded with the sight of one walker about ten feet to her left, covered in dried blood and chewing on the bloody stump of some poor bastard's right leg. Liza kept going, however, and she reached the open door of the farmhouse and as soon as she stumbled inside, both Liza and Jay crashed heavily to the ground, Liza nearly out for the count from the exertion. Jay looked at her sadly and knew she was going to be able to run back out there to Bando, but she wasn't going to be able to bring the nearly-crippled horse back.

He leaned down and kissed her cheek softly and whispered in her ear. "You know what to do. Leave me a pistol and then go out to my horse. Hurry back." A tear leaked down his cheek as she disappeared out through the doorway.

Liza bit back a sob as she ran tiredly through the field, dodging the occasional zombie. She ominously checked the load in her semiautomatic pistol as she approached the area where Bando's dark shape lay. He raised his head when he scented her, eyes reflecting his happiness that she had come back. But her hands were trembling as she raised the pistol to point at Bando's head and his eyes looked confused now. She pulled the trigger and the bullet plowed through the horse's skull. Weeping like a baby, Liza turned and ran back towards the farmhouse.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Liza ran back towards the farmhouse, not able to stop thinking about Bando and the fact that the horse had intentionally stopped the bullets meant for her. She lurched forward, trying not to just collapse from the long, tired night she'd had and trying not to think of the dead horse that she had left behind her and shot in cold blood, to put it out of its misery, but still in cold blood. She dodged a zombie and blasted his head off with the pistol, knowing that she had only three rounds left after that and she knew what would happen if she ran out of ammo but she also knew if she didn't hurry back to Jay and sew up his wounds, he might die. She stepped over the blood and brains and the dead body of the once-walking corpse and then simply continued on her weary way through the knee-high corn.

Back at the farmhouse, Jay had realized a bad mistake on their part: they had left the open doorway of the farmhouse unblocked. Before he could crawl over, the first reanimated corpse rounded the corner of the porch and stumbled through the doorway, moaning up a storm. Jay grimaced as more zombies showed up behind that first one, all of them pushing their way eagerly and hungrily through the space where a door had once been before these undead fuckers took over the world.

"You look a bit pale," he joked grimly to the zombie that had first entered. He grabbed for the six-inch knife that he had holstered on his hip, ready to attempt the most dangerous thing anybody could ever, ever do in a zombie apocalypse: a close-range melee-weapon zombie killing frenzy. It was very dangerous for healthy survivors with sledgehammers or hatchets. They weren't on their hands and knees with multiple bullet wounds and a simple knife though. This was ridiculous to attempt. But Jay wasn't one for griping about circumstances: he went at the zombies hard with the knife, slashing wildly.

That first zombie got his arms sliced up good, but he kept coming, deadly silent and determined to get a chunk of his prey's flesh. It lunged but its jaws snapped shut on thin air as Jay dodged. "Missed me bitch," he grunted, taking a swipe at its face and cutting away a chunk of the ghoul's left cheek. Another zombie moved forward but Jay dredged up all his strength and shoved the cut-up zombie into the other one, sending both tumbling and tripping up the other zombies coming through the door, creating a massive and smelly (albeit cool-looking) pile-up. He collapsed backwards, completely cashed out, unable to defend himself any longer even as the zombies started to get back to their feet inexorably.

Then . . . Jay saw it through a blur, like in some kind of daydream. Liza, who was walking towards the farmhouse outside, began firing and the zombie that had already gotten up was hit in the side of the left kneecap and stumbled, but Jay didn't care: he was grinning at Liza's horrible accuracy. She fired again and the zombie collapsed completely as it was shot through the nose, and Jay's jaw dropped comically. Liza fired her last bullet, which took the teeth out of a second zombie that was trying to rise from the tangled mess of a pile-up.

The zombies still tangled together on the floor moaned and grabbed as Liza leapt over and sailed past their reaching grasps to land on her knees beside Jay, her face covered in sweat and her pistol empty. She smiled at Jay and kissed him on the cheek again. "Miss me, handsome?" She pulled some ammo out of the pouch on Jay's bloody leg. Ironically, she had left him with ammo but no pistol. Loading the clip into her pistol, her grin widened. "We're even now, buddy. I saved you in return."

Liza walked over to the squirming pile of trapped, moaning zombieflesh and carefully took aim, firing from pointblank range over and over again. Jay looked astonished as, twenty seconds after commencing fire, Liza rolled out the dead bodies of every one of the zombies from the surrounding area that had the misfortune to have been close enough to attack them that night. Shell casings and blood littered the floor of the small farmhouse's living room.

She turned around, panting hard. "They're gonna get in here again unless I board this place up. Your wounds can wait, cowboy." He opened his mouth to reply, but his jaw dropped again as she bent down and just put her finger to his lips to shut him up gently. He couldn't believe she could be so calm after what she had just done. But he did not move and just watched her turn the table over and start to kick it into individual planks to board up the door opening with as best as possible.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

When the doorway and windows all around the farmhouse had finally been painstakingly barricaded as much as possible, Liza turned around to look to where Jay was still laying on the hard, uncarpeted wooden floorboards of the living room. She cracked a smile when she saw that he was, in fact, asleep. He had been sleep-deprived for so long, not able to feel safe enough to just lay down and snooze like a baby like he was right now. Liza took another deep breath and then hoisted him onto her shoulders again and stumbled into the bedroom of the house, grumbling about how heavy he was and then laying him down on the dusty bed.

"You stay here," she grunted to him as she hastily bandaged his wounds, even though she knew he blissfully could not hear her. He was pretty shook up and she tried to get him as comfortable as possible before laying their only loaded shotgun on the nightstand beside him just in case, and then she wearily left the bedroom and sat down on the old stained couch in the living room. Oh, how she wished she could take a shower right then . . . She remembered her daddy in the front yard and the . . . the dirty man approaching in a stumbling walk and . . . She sank into the dream of how the outbreak had began for her.

--

Liza was sitting in her bedroom, combing her hair and staring at the computer screen as she chatted with her friends on AOL Instant Messenger. Occasionally, she would glance out the window to where her daddy was riding a lawn mower in the front yard, but only occasionally. She was a relatively carefree young woman, living with her parents still even at her age of nineteen. She was all grown up, and she still had no worries. Well, her only worry was that in three weeks, the date was set for her to get married to her fiance Adam. She got a sly grin on her face just thinking about how much fun the night after the wedding would be.

The grin disappeared as she heard the motor of the lawn mower stop as it lurched to a halt in the yard outside. She blinked and turned to look out, puzzled at what she saw and then getting more and more frightened by the moment as she saw her daddy getting off the ride-on lawn mower and approach a man who was stumbling drunkenly and trying to get into the yard, grabbing for Liza's daddy with hungry moans.

"Exscuse me, sir," she heard her father say politely. "I know it is unfortunate to be drunk on a beautiful day like this and I understand that you can't help yourself. But you just can't walk into my yard like th--"

Liza's eyes went wide as saucers at what happened next. The man lunged forth and ripped out a chunk of her father's throat, and shoved her daddy backwards as he jerked and twitched, blood spurting out of his throat, and then toppled to the green grass which was slowly turning red. The 'drunken' man fell to his knees and munched down on her father's bleeding body.

"YOU CRAZY DRUNK ASSHOLE!" Liza blinked, wondering where that shout had come from, and then saw her mother slamming the front door behind her and aiming a shotgun at the man. "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY HUSBAND, YOU ASSHOLE! OR I'M GONNA FILL YOU FULL OF SOME DOUBLE-OUGHT!" The man looked up dizzily at the shotgun and hungrily licked Liza's dad's blood one more time before getting unsteadily to his feet. "THAT'S RIGHT. JUST STAND THERE WITH YOUR HANDS UP UNTIL THE COPS GET HERE. I ALREADY CALLED THEM, YOU LIMPDICK MOTHERFUCKER."

The neighbors started to come out of their houses to watch in shock, kids with their jaws dropped, parents shaking their heads in disbelief, teenagers flipping out camera phones and filming the action for Youtube as the drunken man stepped over the lifeless body and then came towards the woman holding the shotgun. The woman fired two poorly aimed shots, the roar of the shotgun nearly deafening everyone within ten feet.

The drunken man was hit in the right elbow but didn't seem to even notice its crippled arm, because it was already right on the woman (it didn't even care as buckshot from the second blast peppered its cheeks) and it reached forward with its good arm before she could reload, gave a guttural growl, and grabbed Liza's mom around the shoulders and yanked her forth and bit her nose off. Blood started gushing everywhere as the woman screamed in agony and dropped the shotgun.

The neighbors watched in helpless horror as an apparent drunkard who had taken two rounds of buckshot began mauling a woman that they had known for over a year. Liza watched through the window, sobbing pathetically. Her family had been destroyed in a matter of minutes. The man dropped her mother's limp body and then turned, his bloody face scanning and then spotting the closest house next-door, the neighbors still standing on their sidewalk and watching. He began stumbling towards them and they shrieked and began to run. Liza didn't care as the useless screams and gunshots faded into the distance.

She ran out into her front yard and watched in disbelieving happiness as her mother and father staggered to their feet nearly simultaneously. "You scared the shit out of me!" she yelled joyously, turning to go back inside to get a first-aid kit or something. Then she saw the blank look in their eyes and stopped. "No . . . "

She quietly grabbed up the empty 12-gauge shotgun, knowing it was empty but figuring she could use it for bluffing later on, and then she ran along the yard, skirting around her apparently undead parents, and then dashing down the street. She was heading for Adam's house.

--

Liza came back to reality to find herself writhing on the living room floor, sobbing futilely. She took a very deep breath to calm her nerves from the gruesome flashback she'd just had. Then she sat up with her back against the wall and kept her pistol aimed at the door, keeping watching just like the Ride... Just like Jay had for her back at the bookstore.

Back in the bedroom, Jay was tossing and turning in the bed, remembering his own start in the outbreak . . . He hadn't always been so smooth and cold-hearted . . .

--

Jay smiled at the warm fuzzy feeling in his belly as he sat beside Sarah in the movie theater. For Chrissakes, he was over eighteen and he was still nervous on taking pretty girls on dates, even to see dumbass movies like this Iron Man or whatever. He gave Sarah his sweetest smile as they walked out of the theater after the movie. She wanted something to eat, and Jay was too polite to mention that his wallet contents were disappearing very quickly on this date, but he just sucked up his pride and told her that they could go to to McDonald's.

He reached the car first and opened the passenger side for her, the door creaking as annoyingly as usual as he did open it. She was about to get in when they both heard someone breathing heavily behind them. Sarah just got into the car like nothing was wrong, but Jay closed the door behind her and turned around to see a guy with a wild look in his eyes like a madman, just stumbling towards Jay and the car. He had cuts all over his face like someone had dragged shattered beer bottles across it and his shirtfront was stained with blood.

"Oh, fuck," was Jay's only articulate reaction, as he hurried towards the guy to try to help him. He was obviously seriously injured from a car wreck or mugging or pitbull attack or some shit. He had to get some paramedics down here to help the dude. It was the right thing to do. Plus, it would impress Sarah and he might get some tonight, Jay thought with a grin that did not fit the situation at hand.

When he got closer, he saw that the look in the guy's eyes was hunger, not pain. And it wasn't heavy breathing he had been hearing. It was moaning. Like a zombie, from those Romero movies. But what was most ridiculous was what came to Jay's mind at the sight. He was thinking: "If the guy's jaw is fractured in several places, why is there a hungry look in his eyes?" He slowly backed away but the crazed man kept coming, and with nowhere else to go, Jay stepped out onto the road . . . into oncoming traffic.

He saw the Mercedes roaring to him and his eyes widened in pure terror. "HOLY SHIT!" Jay leaped out of the way just as the madman with the shattered jaw lunged after him and took the full brunt of the Mercedes's horsepower . . . right i the chest. The car smashed the guy into the air and he crashed into the side of an SUV in the theater parking lot and lay limp, while the Mercedes and its horrified driver spun out of control and hit two other pedestrians on the sidewalk before screeching to a halt. Jay lay there panting and watching the whole scene, blood spattered on his cheek from where he had hit the pavement when he leaped out of the way.

Without another word, Jay knew that he had to get the fuck out of there and that something bad was going on, so he ran back to his car and yanked open the driver-side door and lifted his head to yell to Sarah to put her seatbelt on but he saw that the passenger-side door was open and she was fleeing in the distance, not looking back. He was about to shout at her to come back when the Mercedes exploded twenty feet away and he rolled to the floor of his car in shock, trying to shield his eyes as flames erupted everywhere. He started to cry, because he did not know what the fuck was going on.

He got up and turned on the ignition and his car proceeded to roar out of the parking lot. All he knew was he was heading to his aunt's ranch. It was the safest place he knew -- and he had always liked horses.

--

Jay twitched in his sleep, a terrified look on his dreaming face.


	5. Lawd Have Mercy

_CHAPTER FIVE_

Liza had dozed off somehow and was awoken by a banging on the window she had boarded up. Cursing herself silently for falling asleep, she raised the pistol and got up wearily and approached the window very cautiously, her steady footfalls barely making any sound on the old, stained floorboards of the abandoned and dillapidated house they now called shelter. The cold steel of the handgun in her grasp gave Liza courage as she put her ear up against the board she'd nailed over the window. She didn't want to give into the assumption that it was a zombie. It might be another bandit, which was infinitely more dangerous than zombies because the bandits actually carried guns. She waited a moment, but there was no more banging on the window. Whoever had done the banging was, it seemed, waiting for her to answer. She was about to answer when the person spoke.

"Are y'all in there or not?" The voice was a faint Southern drawl, and the speaker didn't seem worried about the zombies that Liza could hear moaning and approaching mere feet from the man. Maybe he was insane, or some religious nut. Maybe he just didn't care. Liza bit her lip, wondering what to say back.

In the bedroom, Jay's eyes snapped open. He seemed to sense that something big was going on. He struggled to sit up, calling out in a hoarse voice for Liza but apparently she couldn't hear over the loud moans of the zombies outside and the man's voice. With a grunt of pain, Jay grabbed the shotgun in one hand and launched his still-wounded body off the bed and grabbed for the cold metal doorknob five feet away with the other hand, holding himself up with its support and tugging the door open, crawling out with the shotgun still in a sort of death grip.

He had dragged himself into the living room just in time to see Liza striding with purpose towards the back door to let the man in. She had obviously just had a conversation with him and he had convinced her that he was trustworthy or something. Jay crawled after her with a terrible sense of urgency for some reason, trying to muster his hoarse voice to yell at her to stop.

Liza had already unbarricaded the back door and opened it, and her jaw dropped in shock as she tried to raise the handgun. A scarred hand lifted and slapped her hard across the face and she stumbled back with a bleeding nose to show for her efforts, and the man stepped inside the house and slammed the door shut behind him. Liza had fallen onto her ass in the kitchen doorway and was staring at him in utter surprise, the handgun laying forgotten a few inches from her hand as she sat there awash in pain. Jay could not spare the time to pity Liza though, because he had recognized the man. He knew him pretty well from the description of the few other survivors he came across from time to time. This was the Pastor, a mountain of a man and very intimidating. He had luckily never met him face to face, but tales were told of his brutality and insanity, and people avoided him as much as possible. Liza had let him in...

The Pastor smiled knowingly and knelt down beside where Liza sat. "Oh _lawwwwd_ have mercy upon your tarnished soul, girl!" he bawled, face alight with an insane glee. He obviously took great pleasure from his 'work' of dispensing religious justice to the survivors of the zombie plague. "D'ya b'lieve in the _Lawd_?" he asked. "D'ya b'lieve in that great merciful SAVIOR?"

"I've got your savior right here," said Jay's calm and collected voice, and the Pastor turned with a raised eyebrow to see the handsome young man laying on his back on the living room floor aiming a shotgun at his belly, cocked and ready to rumble. "I've also got some buckshot ready to dispense some of my own justice. Get the fuck out of this house, you fucking nut. I'm sorely tempted and I don't know how much longer I can stand to look at your ugly, preacher face."

The Pastor stepped back in contemplation, eyes glued to the shotgun's unforgiving barrel, breath rasping, the passion kind of dying away as he realized he might be about to taste some buckshot. "You talkin' to me?" he asked, trying to keep his composure. "Little ole me, the preacher of the Lawd's good work? I just got carried away." He smiled nervously down at Liza, who was grabbing the pistol. She stood up and aimed it at him the whole way as she backed up to stand by Jay, both aiming guns. "What's the big deal here, chil'ren?"

Jay and Liza grinned at each other and then opened fire. The Pastor was shot to rags and tumbled away, his pastorly robes ripped to shreds. A 9mm round slammed into his back and he yelped, but that was the only time he even cried out before he laid facedown on the kitchen floor, a small pool of blood spreading from him. He had been hit twenty times or more. Liza gave Jay a reassuring smile as he reloaded the shotgun and she started to approach the body, but then the Pastor got right back up and Liza blinked, but dismissed him as a zombie and raised the gun lazily.

"NOOO!!" Jay screamed, aiming the reloaded shotgun at the Pastor's face as the other man aimed his own large-caliber handgun at Liza's unprepared face. It was a Mexican standoff of sorts, the Pastor shaking with anger as he ripped his ruined robes off and revealed the body armor beneath. The only place he didn't have armor apparently, was the small of his back, which was the only place a bullet -- one of Liza's -- had penetrated. He looked like he was about to collapse, but his eyes were still alive with 'the passion of God'. He had his passion and insane fervor, and Liza had their bravery: they were young and unafraid.

After a long few minutes, Jay smiled slightly. "Let's let him go, Liza." He looked into the Pastor's eyes. "Call it professional courtesy between two Riders, eh, Pastor? Between that chosen few of us, eh?"

The Pastor started to laugh as he stared back into Jay's eyes. "Very well, boy. But I will be back . . . Trust in the Lawd that I'll be back." He backed towards the door, still aiming the Desert Eagle at Liza's pretty yet bloody nose, and then he opened the back door and slipped it shut. Liza hurriedly barricaded it behind him and turned to Jay with a weary look in her eyes.

"I guess he didn't like us living together unmarried," she joked, and the two young people laughed it off, but they knew there was yet another lingering threat upon them. They would have to move on out of this house very, very soon if they wanted to stay alive. But for now . . .

Jay was about to light-heartedly joke back with Liza, but she threw herself at him suddenly and kissed him hard and he fell back in surprise, groaning in pain from his wounds but not really caring. He kissed her back vigorously. He had never felt that happy after the zombies came. Too bad that happiness wasn't going to last much longer...


	6. Pilgrimage to Dappington

CHAPTER SIX

Jay awoke beside Liza in the bedroom and grinned through the slight pain as he lifted himself up on his elbow and gazed at her for a moment. She was so damned beautiful, he thought to himself proudly. He struggled off of the bed and managed to get to his feet. He didn't know why it was so damned hard to walk. He had only been shot three times, all of the wounds above the waist and nowhere near his legs. Two in the right arm and shoulder and one in the belly, but none in the legs. Jay just didn't understand why he felt so weakened. He made his limping, awkward way into the living room and stared out at the early morning sun through the cracks in the boards nailed over the window. His thoughts of Liza's beautiful features were replaced by the manic face of the Pastor grinning crazily and brandishing the Desert Eagle. Jay grunted, and promised himself that he would eventually kill the Pastor.

Liza yawned and got up from the bed as well, stretching and walking sleepily out of the bedroom to find her lover and grinning when she spotted him by the window, peeking out through the cracks. He was amazing, she thought as she approached soundlessly, her bare feet making next to no noise on the wooden floorboards. She made him forget about the zombies moaning outside, made her forget about her parents, even made her forget about Adam. She came up beside him and took his hand, squeezing it gently and they stood like that. It felt like it was just meant to be somehow...

--

The Pastor grunted as he limped along on the dirt country road about a hundred yards from the farmhouse. He was pissed that the female sinner had actually managed to hit him in the back with one of those pussy nine-mil rounds. The wound was not serious, but it hurt badly enough to make him nearly use one of the words that his apparent Messiah forbade him to use. He heaved air into his lungs and tried to calm down as he avoided the zombies. They were just heathens from hell that the 'Lawd would eventually send back to hell,' as the Pastor thought. They were not relevant and best left alone. But still the Pastor had had a few altercations with the heathens . . . Just as he was about to right then . . .

One heathen was easy to avoid, but when more than one was around within a few feet? There was going to be some trouble, no matter who you believed in. Two zombies staggered out of the darkness to the Pastor's left and he reluctantly raised the Desert Eagle. He dodged the first heathen and then squeezed the trigger and the loud boom of the large-caliber handgun split the air like the roar of a lion as he shot the heathen twice in the back of the head. The other heathen lunged in close as well and tried to bite the Pastor's throat, but he was a tough man to kill. He raised a booted foot at the heathen plummeting towards him, and kicked the mangy creature backwards neatly, and the roar came again, bits of brain and blood spraying everywhere.

The Pastor grunted. The brief conflict had set his gunshot wound to bleeding again, but he merely smiled. "There's gon' be a day of RECKONING, chil'ren!" he shrieked to the night sky. He broke into laughter that was just as insane as him. "THERE'S GON' BE VENGEANCE!"

_Oh yes_, the Pastor thought as he reloaded the Desert Eagle and dodged another heathen. He knew that those kids were going to see the error of their ways. They were going to regret every breath they had inhaled and exhaled while defying the Great Lawwwd!! The Pastor was going to see to that. Personally.

--

The zombie was staring dully up at the sun blazing in the morning sky and stumbling over its own feet as it walked across the porch of the farmhouse. As he was doing this, he didn't even notice the two humans quietly as possible loosening the nails and unboarding the door of the farmhouse. He didn't even notice the door ever so slowly creeping open a few inches behind him. He didn't even notice when the young woman put a single shot into the back of his head with the pistol and he crumpled onto his face, motionless, and rolled off down the porch steps to land in a smelly heap at the bottom.

Liza smiled tiredly at the sight of another zombie down. "See you in hell," she murmured to herself, helping Jay down the steps. He was reasonably well healed, and they had decided to wait until full daylight before trying to get the hell out of the farmhouse before they were fully surrounded by zombies. Jay knew the surrounding area reasonably well and he had informed her that the closest town was about a mile to the east. With Jay still clinging to her to keep himself from falling every few steps, they set off towards the east, weaving around the occasional zombie as they took off down the dirt road. The only thing they could do was play 'I Spy'.

"I spy something with . . . a lot of blood all over it and . . . " Jay groaned. "Oh God, it hurts . . . "

Liza squeezed his unwounded shoulder reassuringly. "It's gonna be okay . . . " She looked around. "Lemme guess what you spy . . . . " Liza gazed around once more, thinking hard. "That particularly ugly one, with half his left cheek missing?" she inquired hopefully. They both laughed and Jay shook his head. "The one with his rib cage turned inside out?" Jay chuckled a little and shook his head again. She sighed. "I give up . . . "

Jay raised his hand and gently tapped Liza in the belly. She blinked and raised an eyebrow. "Are you drunk or high or something, Mr. Rider?" she joked. Then she looked down and saw that her belly was covered in black coagulated blood where it had leaked from the numerous zombies she'd killed and a little bright red blood was sprayed there too where she had killed the outlaws. Jay had spied her. It had just taken Liza a while before she caught on. She punched him good-naturedly in the good shoulder and then they continued on their way . . . towards the closest town.

Dappington had been one of those foolish towns to think that the zombies were just plague victims, at the start of the outbreak, and they had quarantined the town, setting up roadblocks so the residents couldn't leave, and then they had realized their mistake . . . but by then it was far, far too late. Liza's heart sank as they came over a hill and saw the reasonably large town spread out before them like a jigsaw puzzle, sticking out of the countryside like some kind of angry red pimple. Jay didn't seem too affected as the familiar sight greeted him. He was, after all, a Rider, and he'd been to actual _cities_, and surely they were more . . . ruined then this town had become.

Without a word to each other, the two survivors made their slow way down the other side of the hill and to the closest barricade at one of the roads exiting the town and painstakingly climbed over. And then they saw that a group of police officers and SWAT officers of Dappington had attempted to make a last stand, at least at this barricade, anyways . . . And it had failed . . . Liza automatically fell to her knees and vomited, careful to turn her head to the side so she didn't puke over the mess of dead cops and SWAT men and shell casings and blood spattered over about sixteen feet of the street in almost every direction . . . The cops had waited till the zombies had come close enough and then had fought them hand-to-hand, most every cop sustaining a bite. It looked like they had temporarily fought the zombies off and then a mass suicide had occured . . . Now there was just an eerie silence hanging over the whole gory scene . . . Even Jay seemed a little queasy at the sight.

And then a sound reached the ears of the still-stunned survivors. A distant gunshot. Both backed away from the large pile of dead cops and huddled together instinctively, clasping their hands together and exchanged looks. Liza was a fast learner -- she could tell that they both shared the same thought. Without another word, they carefully went around the battlefield and scrambled over some rubble and old rotting cars, penetrating deeper into Dappington and towards those gunshots.

They made their way hurriedly down the deserted streets, Jay limping as fast as possible in his condition. Then they turned a corner and saw it. Seven zombies were approaching three people who were backing away very fast down an alley, shooting guns randomly. The zombies were taking hits like Robocop until one was shot through the face and toppled but the other half-dozen kept coming.

Liza raised the pistol and shot one of the zombies in the back and then raised her aim and shot it again, through the skull. Goblets of brain matter sprayed everywhere, and two of the five remaining zombies turned towards her for a moment. Liza stepped forward bravely and snapped off several unaimed shots, then dropped to one knee and aimed about as best you can aim with a pistol and fired twice at the zombies and two went down.

Three zombies remained, and one -- a shriveled and old zombie, might once have been a resident of a nursing home for all Liza knew -- hobbled towards her with surprising speed and it struck fear into Liza's heart briefly. The zombie kept coming and then its forehead caved in suddenly and it toppled. Jay laughed painfully and pumped the shotgun with one arm, ejecting a smoking red shell. Then . . . he realized that the last two zombies had been SWAT officers and he went pale.

The zombies staggered toward the three strangers that were in the alley, and the first maggotbag was blown back, shotgunned in the chest of its body armor, but it kept coming, moaning hungrily. BLAM! It was shot in the shoulder of its body armor. PING! Liza's bullet ricocheted off the helmet.

"I always did hate law enforcement," she yelled, drawing in a deep breath and taking a running leap forward and tackling both zombies to the ground. They had been strong men when they were alive and they didn't go down easily, but when they did go down, they went down hard. She aimed the pistol, keeping the first zombie down with a knee on his back, and shot straight down through the unarmored back of the walker's neck, paralyzing it. She did the same with the second zombie and then kicked them to the side of the alley, taking off their helmets, and finishing them off wearily. She turned to the other survivors. "Who are you?"


	7. A Price On His Head

CHAPTER SEVEN

All three of the strangers were silent for a long moment, before one finally stepped forward and looked Liza right in the eye. He had a curly mop of hair and the look of a young man who took to chain-smoking cigarettes as any solution to his problems. But he wore a ghost of a smile as he stuck out a hand towards Liza, showing his gratitude for her and Jay saving him and his comrades. After a couple of more hesitant seconds, his two companions moved forward as well and offered their hands to shake to their two rescuers.

"Sorry about that," the curly-haired guy said, seeming a little embarassed that they'd had to be rescued from seven zombies. "We were going to get some food, and . . . It was an ambush . . . We barely escaped enough to run but they were right behind us, and we had limited ammo and . . . We thought we were screwed until you guys showed up. My name is Daniel."

Jay locked eyes with one of the other two strangers, a young brunette woman who was wearing a dress covered in blood, oddly enough. "My name is Arielle. Nice to meet you. The pleasure is all yours, blah blah blah . . . " She took out a cigarette and lit it up and the corners of Jay's mouth twitched in a smile.

The third stranger hesitated, then leaned close to the Daniel guy and spoke into his ear in a low voice. Daniel blinked, momentarily surprised by whatever the man told him, and then gazed at Jay with grim eyes. Jay hoped the man wasn't going to try to kill him, because if he did, his handsome face would never be handsome again. Jay would make sure of that. He didn't like the way the guy looked at Liza, anyways. The third stranger gave an awkward smile, as if he was forcing himself to be nice and calm, and finally introduced himself simply as 'Phil'.

As Jay and Liza smiled and were about to introduce themselves as well, Jay could feel the eyes of all three of the newcomers burning holes in him. It was as if . . . No, they couldn't know about the bounty on Jay's head, could they? It wouldn't have reached this far out here, the news of the bounty. He had slept with the daughter of the leader of the Detroit city-state and the man hadn't taken too kindly to that. The Rider had killed eight men and had recieved a gunshot wound to his leg when he had had to escape from the city. The Detroit leader had placed a bounty of seven assault rifles and two hundred mags of ammunition on Jay's head to bring him back . . . dead or alive. He could feel his heart pounding as he stared straight into Daniel's searching gaze.

"Jay . . . " Daniel said, pretending to be thinking. "That name doesn't sound familiar. Could you be known by another name, like the Rider or something like that? Phil here says he recognizes you from the Detroit outpost. Said you kind of fit the description of the Rider..."

Jay's lips parted in a snarl which he managed to turn into a friendly smile. "Hell no . . . That Rider guy sure is scary though . . . Nah, I'm just Jay, and this is my . . . " He sent a sideways loving smile towards Liza. "This is my wife Eliza, or Liza as she likes to be called . . . "

Liza raised an eyebrow at the 'wife' thing, but just smiled back and Jay glanced away guiltily. She snorted a mirthless laugh and looked directly into Daniel's eyes. "What do you think you'd do if he was the Rider anyway? The Rider is fast and deadly with a pistol and . . . " She smiled at Jay again. "Sexy as hell. Or so I've heard." Then she aimed her pistol right at Daniel's gut. "So, what'd you do if he was the Rider?"

Daniel went pale as milk, eyes flicking back and forth between Liza and Jay nervously. He almost reached for his pistol, but he knew Liza would and could kill him. His courage was fading away fast. He thought fast. "Uh, we survivors gotta stick together, right?" He stared at Liza pleadingly. "What does it matter if he looks like the Rider? He probably ain't him, right? Right? Let's all just be friends. Us survivors gotta stick together, right?"

Liza smiled sweetly, keeping the pistol aimed at Daniel's gut as Jay raised the shotgun and covered Arielle and Phil, making sure they didn't make any dumb decisions. "I totally agree," Liza said menacingly.

--

The Pastor grinned innocently, placing his hands behind his hand and going to his knees in the dusty street in front of the barricades protecting the small fortified town, one of the few towns that still had organized government and an organized militia these days. The Pastor was chuckling grimly even as the half dozen militiamen approached him, aiming pistols and shotguns and rifles cautiously. They were obviously scared of him, and they had reason to be. He looked like a dangerous man . . . And he was one, especially to this town full of sinners.

"Take the big handgun out of your holster, and lay it CAREFULLY on the ground and kick it away," the lead militiaman shouted sternly, planning on taking no bullshit from this dangerous-looking outsider. "Let's go, move it! Move it, scum, move it!"

The Pastor looked over at him and grinned predatorily and saw recognition flash in the militia leader's eyes for a brief second. The man knew who he was. But it was too late. The Pastor drew the Desert Eagle and cocked and fired the large-caliber weapon. He just let the lead fly. The militia leader grunted as he was shot in the side and hip and he was blown backwards by the massive impact. The next man lifted his rifle to his shoulder but was shot through the head before he could even comprehend that it was necessary to pull the trigger. A bullet knocked up dust a foot from the Pastor's knee and he saw that the remaining four militiamen had their weapons up and were opening fire, and they meant business.

The Pastor got to his feet and advanced with ruthless military precision and fired three times, rejoicing at the looks of fear on the faces of the soldiers as the fingers of hell closed around them. Two soldiers were knocked backwards, rolling and tumbling head over heels. The last two were determined to stand their ground because they recognized who he was now. The Pastor aimed the Desert Eagle lazily at one soldier and shot him three times, and the last man dropped his own pistol and turned to run, heroism fading away quickly. The Pastor took careful aim and pulled the trigger but sighed in annoyance as he realized he had ran out of bullets. He stopped to reload but never took his eyes off the man trying frantically to scramble back over the barricades behind which forty other militiamen were waiting to try and halt the Pastor's rampage. He finally managed to climb atop the sun-baked rubble and mounds of broken bricks that comprised one of the barricades and stood there to catch his breath, about to leap down behind the barricade, to safety . . . He thought he had gotten away. He turned to send a last taunting glance at the Pastor and his gun, and saw the big man aiming right at his chest with that gun and he went pale.

The Pastor fired a single shot, grinned, and then headed onward. He had to finish this town full of sinners. It was a hard job, but he loved it. He had forty more militiamen sinners to kill and then there were the women sinners and the baby sinners and . . . So much work to be done, so little bullets.

--

Only minutes ago, the survivors had been on the brink of a shootout over money or the equivalent of money in this post-apocalyptic land, and now they were on a fragile truce, traveling up the road through Dappington bent low and silent as they could possibly be. None of them had any desire to have any further encounters with the zombies if they could help it and, since the sun was going down and night was setting in, it was even more dangerous. Zombies loved the night . . . While human confidence seemed to disappear in the darkness, the undead seemed to flourish.

They ran crouching down another street and turned down an alley past a bar where some young men and women might have been partying hard if this was a normal weekend night, and then they turned out of the alley onto yet another street, and finally reached their destination, the place that Daniel had told them he and his own comrades were staying.

Jay stopped them outside the big, imposing apartment building and stared at Daniel very suspiciously. "How much farther?" he growled. His gunshot wounds were still bothering him quite a lot, and he was in no mood to be BSed.

Daniel sighed and then turned and pointed at a third-floor window. "We have to get up there through some stairs in the building. The first and second floors are still mildly infested with walkers, but it shouldn't be a problem. The third, fourth and fifth floors are all clear."

Jay shrugged. Arielle grinned widely, Liza just nodded, and Phil grimaced. They crept through the empty parking lot, and stared in through the broken windows and permanently open doorway at the lobby and watched the zombies staggering around inside. Maybe half a dozen or more of them and those were only the ones they could see. There might be more in the darkness. They ducked back for a second and all took deep breaths, and then went inside, guns up and ready.


	8. Sure is Purty

CHAPTER EIGHT

The survivors entered the lobby and aimed their firearms at the undead and methodically shot them left to right, the shots like a crack of thunder and like a beacon calling other zombies from all around inside the building and all around inside the town. Arielle leaped through the lobby like a madwoman, a cigarette dangling from her lips as she fired over and over, just spraying lead as zombies seemed to materialize out of the darkness on all sides, dozens and dozens of the rotting fuckers. Jay had survival instinct, however; he actually moved forward, because he remembered the goal was not to kill all the zombies, but to get to the third floor. The other survivors just kept shooting until they finally finished their rampage and stepped over the bullet-riddled bodies littering the lobby. They all quickly reloaded and then Daniel let out a nervous cough to get all their attention.

They all turned to him, and he gave an embarassed smile. "Uh, you know we only cleared the first floor just now? We've still gotta clear the second one . . . "

Liza sighed deeply, weary from the brutal fighting that they'd undertaken to capture the lobby. "Fuck."

--

The Pastor looked around through the smoke wafting through the streets of what had once been a safe, happy town and was now just a ghost town. Except it wasn't filled with zombies shambling around, it was full of very dead bodies. The Pastor had strolled through the entire town, shooting at anything that moved. He had taken a bullet in the thigh and his slightly weakened armor there had repelled the slug itself, but he knew he had some serious bruising there and it pissed him off. He looked around at the blood spattered along the ground in every direction, smiling brightly and listening to the frantic female screaming of the last living sinner of the town, fleeing along an alley. The woman skidded to a halt at the dead end of the alley and turned around desperately, seeing that the Pastor was blocking the other end of the alley, and she was trapped. Most people would be begging for their lives at this point, but this particular sinner just struck a defiant pose and waited.

"Nice day, isn't it?" the Pastor asked calmly as he reloaded the Desert Eagle, still smiling happily to his last victim as she exuded hatred towards him. He smiled kindly as he finished and aimed the large-caliber weapon at the center of her chest. "Your comrades fought bravely. Your fellow sinners, that is. But they failed because I've got the power of the Lawwwd behind me and he is the MOST powerful, and I am the MOST faithful to the Lawd."

The woman shook her head in wonder and then gave a huge grin and giggled hysterically over the noise of the flames consuming a house a few buildings down the street. She breathed deep and tried to compose herself, even though she knew she was probably about to die. "You gotta love you lunatics sometimes . . . You're what keeps us knowing that the human race is one sick species . . . And that's why we're gonna die out through these zombies . . . So go ahead and kill me. But YOUR GOD ISN'T REAL! HE'S A FAKE, A FRAU--"

Her right knee exploded, and she shrieked and toppled to the hard pavement of the alleyway floor. The Pastor moved a bit closer, shaking with anger. The woman groaned and looked down at her destroyed, bleeding kneecap and then back up at the insane former preacher. "What's wrong, did your 'God' make you miss?" She groaned and tried to get up.

The Pastor gave an angry little, tight-lipped grin and holstered the Desert Eagle and the woman looked confused. "As God is my witness, I damn you to hell." He pulled out a Bible and the woman still looked confused. "FEEL THE WRATH OF THE WORD OF GOD!" the Pastor shouted suddenly, pulling out a smaller, stranger-looking pistol-like object from a hole cut into the pages of the Bible and shooting the woman in the chest. Her head snapped back and she began writhing everywhere as if being electrocuted repeatedly.

He knelt, bending down to her, and revived her with smelling salts after the writhing had stopped. "You're a good girl, despite being a sinner . . . " He had a wickedly satisfied look in his eyes. "Your ignorance of the words of the Laaawd will be forgiven. I would like to think that you've learned a valuable lesson and that you will repent to make up for your forbidden deeds, and am I correct, girl . . . or should I just kill you now?" He put the taser away and once more drew out the Desert Eagle and pointing it at the spot where the bullet had fractured her kneecap. "Do we have a deal?"

The woman stared at him, choking back tears. "You tr-tried to kill us. You came here to blow them all away, blow me away . . . They're all dead and . . . " She took as deep a breath as possible and then just let go, sobbing in great gulps of air. She blinked away a tear before nodding slightly and the Pastor smiled. He had an apprentice.

--

The zombie standing at the top of the stairs on the second floor wasn't even aware of the survivors coming up the stairs from the first floor until he lost a signifigant portion of his head thanks to Jay's shotgun. Another walker toppled with a shot to the forehead from Daniel's pistol and Liza and Arielle took care of another two zombies apiece. Phil just kind of stood there and watched. Jay snapped open the shotgun and loaded it, watching Phil very, very suspiciously as he did so.

Zombies came around the corner to the top of the stairs, but turned straight into a barrage of gunfire. Bullets struck bursts of plaster from the wall where they missed but mostly they hit the zombies and they toppled like ninepins. Jay ran to the blood-stained and bullet-torn corner around which the zombies had come, muttering obscenities as he went. He turned around the corner and saw the zombie a few feet away and squeezed the trigger and it was blasted backwards, sprayed with buckshot. Daniel came around the corner after him, pistol barking rapidly as he chose his targets as best he could in the darkened hallway, though it did annoy him that the power hadn't been on for months and months.

Liza came next, surprisingly calm even as the zombies loomed out of the darkness. She wasn't grinning like an idiot or anything, but she seemed to be enjoying herself. Apparently she was confident that they would make it to the third floor. And they did continue pretty smoothly through the second floor down the hallway towards the next stairwell to the third floor, guns blazing. With a last spray of blood, skull and brain, they made it to the foot of the stairs leading up to the third floor. They scampered up the stairs, panting heavily and certain that their laboured breathing was loud enough to attract every zombie in Dappington.

"This place has way too many stairs," Phil panted, his plump face shiny and red with sweat and exertion as he waddled after them, last in line because he was the slowest.

Nobody paid attention to his comment and they made their way to the top of the flight of steps and blinked in pleasant surprise as they saw the empty, carpeted hallway and the dim lights on.

"Somebody's been here before and restored the power to only this floor," Jay mused.

Daniel sighed and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, didn't we tell you that this was our hideout?" He burst out laughing at Jay's ignorance.

Liza patted him on the back with her still-scalding pistol barrel, and it wasn't a love tap either. "Have your wisecrack but remember who is in control here," she warned sharply, and Daniel's eyes narrowed but he said nothing further out of turn.

They reached a certain apartment, #332, and Daniel cautiously turned the doorknob and they all came in, aiming their guns. You could never be too careful in a zombie apocalypse. But the apartment was empty and safe and they locked the door behind them. Daniel explained to Jay about how there was only four rooms and he, Phil and Arielle had already taken three separate rooms, leaving one spare bedroom. Jay smiled suggestively and told Daniel that he and Liza could definitely share a room. Daniel's anger and resentment simmered under the surface but he forced himself to smile.

Meanwhile, Liza was shocked to find that the other survivors had gotten the water working somehow, and even if it wasn't a hot shower, it was still a shower. She knew she looked like shit and smelled worse, so she really needed a shower. Liza painfully disrobed, leaving the door cracked so she could hear the conversation outside in the main apartment. She didn't like leaving Jay alone with the other three. The attractive young woman got into the shower and closed the curtain and had only been enjoying her soak for about five minutes when she heard a small thud as the door closed and then a click as it locked. She opened the curtains a tiny bit and looked out, seeing the last thing she would ever expect to see: a smiling Arielle climbing into the shower with her with a small splash.

--

Daniel and Jay sat in the living room, glaring at each other. Phil was at the window, staring down at the shapes and shadows of the zombies moving in the street below. Arielle and Liza were, strangely, nowhere to be seen . . . But no matter. Jay knew that if Liza was in trouble, he'd hear gunshots so he didn't worry.

"You do not fool me," Daniel said as calmly as he could. "You are the Rider, Jay. I know. You were a royal pain in the ass to the leader in Detroit, and he has a price on your head . . . A lot of people want those rifles and ammo . . . They might even kill for it. And the girl traveling with you? Your 'wife'? She suuuure is 'purty'." Daniel was adopting a thick Southern accent to mock Jay.

"Yeah, isn't she beautiful?" Jay agreed calmly, and Daniel repeated his threat. "Oh, geez that's a scary thought. I might have you three bumbling idiots trying to assassinate me. Oh nooo, what will I ever do?" Jay smiled at Daniel good-naturedly and then brought up the shotgun to aim at the other man's gut. "But consider it. Because you would be the first to go down. It would be really stupid to try, bucko . . . I'm a hard man to kill." Jay nodded at his healing bullet wounds, visible through the many rips and tears in his travel-worn clothing. "We've had this conversation before, when we first met a couple of hours ago. Remember, dipshit? I'd stick to killing zombies if I were you."

Daniel rolled his eyes again. "Cool down. We won't assassinate you right now, anyways... What we've got here is a failure to communicate." He patted Jay's shoulder in as friendly a way as he could muster. "Just . . . take a break and relax, man. Arielle's a good cook, we've got good supplies, and . . . " He looked around, irritated. "Where the flying fuck is Arielle anyways?" He saw the closed bathroom door and did not bother hiding his grin as he stopped midsentence and cast a mocking look at Jay.

Jay blinked, puzzled. "What's the deal, man?"

Phil chuckled from his place by the window. He already knew what was going on without even looking at the closed door. "Uhh . . . Arielle's a lesbian," he said as he turned to Jay with a mischevious glint in his eye.

Jay swallowed hard. He was starting to get an idea of what was going on. "Oh, that's nice . . . " He tightened his grip on the shotgun and began to think that it was a mistake to join up with these other survivors.


	9. The Sinners Will Be Punished

CHAPTER NINE

Over the next few weeks, the survivors didn't have a good time of it. Their lives were completely unpredictable and they never knew if tomorrow or today was going to be the day that they died and reanimated or the day that they got raided by bandits and raped or killed. They never knew. It was tense and uncomfortable to live like that, but they still managed. They were human beings. They weren't going to let something that amounted to a decomposing corpse beat them, even if it could walk and bite them and kill them and make them one of its own kind. Fuck that. But still, they were each trying to deal with it in their own ways, and . . . it was usually disastrous.

Daniel had taken to drinking a lot lately, for instance. The person that had owned the apartment before them had apparently had a liking for hard liquor, but either way Daniel had found the cabinet full of warm tequila and he had punished the entire thing in one night and got shitfaced basically. Phil dealt with the whole situation of zombies and such by being a complete and total nervous wreck. Jay toyed with the high-powered SKS assault rifle that had once been Daniel's pride and joy, but since he had been drinking so heavily lately, Jay had commandeered the rifle and spent his time taking it apart, putting it back together, and cleaning it. It was almost an obsession for him. Liza and Arielle occupied themselves with secret little smiles directed at each other and whispering together when Jay wasn't in the same room as them.

But one day, about two weeks after they had all began to try and eke out a miserable existence in one tiny apartment, Jay realized that there was no end anywhere in sight, until their supplies ran out. They were not going anywhere anymore. They were trapped here, cooped up in this hellhole. It felt like he was awakening from a deep sleep or something. He felt enlightened. He sat up and looked around sternly at the other survivors sitting around, apathetically staring out of windows and clutching their weapons needlessly.

"We need to find other survivors," he said loudly.

"You think so?" Daniel asked drunkenly, taking another swig from the bottle of tequila. "You can do it then and we'll just wait here for you."

"I'm getting out of here," Jay replied with a shrug. "I might be back. I might." He turned to look at Liza and his eyes went hard. "You stay here with your girlfriend."

Liza looked shocked as Jay made sure the SKS was loaded and ready and started loading extra ammo into a duffel bag beside him. He turned to leave and Liza gripped his shoulder strongly and made sure to whisper in his ear, not too loudly. "I love you very much." It seemed like she was pleading with him to stay.

Jay laughed softly. "Is that a fact? Good for you. You could have fooled me." He shook his head slowly and then turned and hurried out the door without another word. Liza turned helplessly to Arielle, who grinned and nodded.

--

Jay breathed as quietly as possible as he crept through the lobby of the apartment building, stepping carefully over the dead bodies of the zombies they'd exterminated two weeks ago. He wasn't scared of the dark, but he was a little freaked out by what lurked in it. Surely, more zombies had reoccupied the lobby by this time, and they were waiting for him. He was sure of it. He made it out of the dark lobby without seeing a single zombie however and gave a sigh of relief, relaxing. And of course, that was when a zombie caked with blood and dirt lunged out of the darkness of the lobby behind him and knocked him sprawling down the front steps of the apartment building.

Jay felt his body flood with pain as he collided with the concrete sidewalk face first and sure enough, when he sat up weakly, he felt blood running down his cheek and chin. Spitting blood and cursing whoever decided to make sidewalks out of concrete, Jay turned around to face the zombie stumbling down the steps, and he was ready to kick ass. The zombie was about to reach him when a loud gunshot rang out and the walker tumbled like a ton of bricks, hit square in the middle of the forehead.

He turned to see the other survivors (Arielle, Liza, Phil and Daniel) all walking out of the darkness towards him with grim faces, Liza holding the smoking pistol with which she'd made the shot.

"You fucking whore," Jay yelled affectionately, struggling to his feet.

Daniel blinked, still staggering drunk. "We thought about things and decided . . . We're human beings. We gotta help each other out, we gotta stick together . . . If we didn't, we wouldn't be human . . . " Daniel shrugged in embarassment. "Seemed the right thing to do. Besides, you're worth more alive than dead. No offense."

Jay's smile widened and he brushed the blood off his chin as best he could. "None taken."

--

Every one of the survivors had an itchy trigger finger as they crept through the early morning sunlight on the deserted-seeming streets of the zombie-ruled town. Jay was still bleeding badly and they were all nearly hugging their guns for support because without them they felt vulnerable and helpless. Without them, they _were_ vulnerable and helpless. To the zombies, they _were_ vulnerable and helpless. They were dinner. And dinner was served.

This point was illustrated by the first zombie staggering out of an alleyway to their right and letting out a low moan and staggering forward, trying to grab Liza's shoulders. BAM! BANG! BOOM! RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT! BULLAM BULLAM BOOM! A variety of gunshots sounded from the tight-knit little group and the zombie was riddled full of bullets in seconds. For a brief second they stood there and gaped.

Then Jay broke the spell. "Just fucking run, god-damn it, run!" he yelled, aiming the SKS and popping off another quick five shots at a second zombie stumbling around the street corner behind them. Daniel started running with the others but he was still a little shitfaced so he tripped drunkenly over some debris and fell over face down, clawing at the rubble and trying to get back up. Jay stopped in mid-stride and smiled contemptuously as he let the SKS hang on the shoulder strap and he helped Daniel quickly to his feet and they stumble-ran side by side after the others. "Come on, hurry you rotten drunk!"

The running footsteps pounded down street after street of Dappington, the survivors energized only by sheer terror of the fate that awaited them if they got cornered by the undead. At one point, Jay turned around as he ran and saw seven sprinters join the mob of shamblers coming after them on every street. The survivors simply went faster because of that, but the exhaustion started to show very soon. Arielle was the first to go. She fell to the ground and rolled over on her back, chest heaving in and out as she struggled to breathe.

Jay knelt beside her very quickly as the others skidded to a halt beside Arielle as well. "No rush, you know, but uh . . . We've got somewhere to be and it's not here. Getting eaten by zombies is not our destination, God damn it. Let's go, Arielle."

Before Arielle could reply, the sprinters came running around the corner and headed straight for the panting, heavily-sweating survivors. Jay yelped in fear and brought up the SKS and fired it from the hip. Screaming like a little girl, Phil did the same with his shotgun and the others joined in except for Arielle, who seemed to have gone into a dead faint. The first three sprinters were riddled with bullet wounds and toppled to the stained pavement, twitching spasmodically. But the other four were already on the survivors like ugly on an ape . . .

Jay felt one of them tackle him and kicked it off as he landed on his stomach with his wind knocked out, rolling onto his back. He reached for the dropped SKS but the zombie he was fighting kicked it away unintentionally as it was flailing on top of him. He couldn't see what was happening to the others, but could hear animalistic grunts and yells of desperation and fear and raw hate. Jay slammed his fist into the sprinter's swollen lips but that didn't dislodge the zombie and it still stayed on top of him, and his strength was wearing out fast. He thought fast, mind racing and thinking of everything possible. He knew that in the movies the zombies usually died by being like bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher but he didn't have a fire extinguisher . . . He had a . . . knife. He drew it out and brought it across the zombie's wrist as hard as he could and grinned mirthlessly as the hand toppled off and Jay twisted the crippled arm behind the zombie's back, getting on top of it instead and smashing its face repeatedly against the street until it stopped moving. Panting a little (or a lot), Jay grabbed the SKS assault rifle up wearily and fired five times quickly. The other three zombies crumpled off of Jay's comrades and they got to their feet, exhausted and drenched in blood.

Jay looked at them quietly, his intentions clear and he finally voiced the intentions. "Did you guys get bit? I didn't get bit." Daniel, Arielle and Liza shook their heads with grateful smiles on their faces but a horrified-looking Phil slowly held up an arm covered in blood. It was his arm, half gnawed off. There was a tense silence.

"Oh, boy," Phil said to end the silence and he fell to one knee. He was quickly losing his strength completely and it wouldn't be long now. That was a massive wound and the virus was traveling at phenomenal speeds through his bloodstream now. When it reached his brain . . . Everybody was standing there, avoiding any eye contact with Phil so that they didn't have to remember the pleading look in his gaze. He stood there crying silently and waiting for one of them to execute him. Jay finally lifted the SKS and fired one controlled burst into Phil's face. Phil's body toppled backwards and spun in midair to lay face-down in a puddle of muddy water on the sidewalk . . . Well, you couldn't technically lay face-down if you don't have a face . . .

Daniel stood there staring for a second longer. "I'm glad I drank too much," he muttered, and stumbled off down the street. Jay just stood there, face painted with horror. Liza put a hand on his shoulder and then knelt and helped Arielle up and set off after Daniel. Jay followed after a moment down the dark street. All he was thinking about was that there had better be some survivors out there other than the ones he already knew of. This had better be actually worth something, this trip . . .


	10. Clean Up On Aisle Two

CHAPTER TEN

Liza peered cautiously around the street corner. She saw a stack of rotting flesh lying in the road around the corner and smirked grimly. Some humans had either done some damage to some zombies and won the battle, or some zombies had done some damage to some humans and won the battle. It was hard to tell. Either way, it looked safe now. She turned to the others and tried to look relaxed as she waved them forward, signaling silently that it was safe, and they moved on around the corner. They were tired, sweaty and stinky and they just wanted to hurry up and find some other survivors. Arielle had a nasty knot on her head from where her head had banged into the pavement during the hand-to-hand fight with the sprinters, and she was looking a little dizzy. Either way, they were all still breathing, and that was good enough. Liza silently pondered if they would ever find any other survivors, as their muffled footsteps dully echoed on the street, occasionally a discarded newspaper blowing by or a stray cat running past. Liza saw Jay's hungry gaze following one of the cats, and shook her head in disgust. Even she wasn't starving enough to eat a fucking cat.

Eventually, three streets further, Daniel could stand no more of the silence. "Why are we doing this?" he asked hoarsely, and stopped in the middle of the road. "What's the point? All the survivors are dead or gone. We could search all day long, all night long, and never find a single fuckin' survivor. And now Phil's dead because of it, God damn it. The man was my friend."

Jay gave him a calm look and pointedly adjusted the SKS on its shoulder strap. "Shut your mouth. You've made your point."

Daniel kept going, though. He obviously wasn't intimidated at all. "We shouldn't have come out of the safety of that apartment building in the first place. You led us like lambs to the slaughter. You don't care if you sacrifice us all just to find a few other survivors. Well, I'm gonna live through this thing. I'm gonna fuckin' make it." Daniel's voice snapped at the last few words and he began sobbing brokenly and he was yelling through his tears by the time he finished.

Jay smiled simply. "We have to try. If you want to try to make it back to the apartment building, that's totally cool with me. Good luck, and have a nice trip." Jay kept walking past, staring straight ahead. Arielle and Liza stared at Daniel, and the three of them were silent for a moment.

"He's gone crazy," Daniel pleaded desperately. "Come with me. I can't make it back alone. You know that." Liza and Arielle walked after Jay without a word, Liza holding her limping lesbian lover up and supporting her with an arm around her shoulders. "YOU'RE ALL MANIACS!" Daniel shrieked shrilly after them, and he fell to his knees and began bawling his eyes out like a baby. "THERE'S NO MORE FUCKING SURVIVORS!"

"Cut it out, dude.. Please. You're fucking annoying and you're going to draw zombies to our position, asshole."

Daniel, Jay, Liza and Arielle all stared in stunned awe at the place where the voice had come from. Three other survivors crouched inside the shattered display window of a sporting goods store, with guns aimed and ready to fire if needed, in case Jay and his group were bandits.

"I don't fucking believe this," Daniel whispered, his voice echoing however in the silence. He was genuinely puzzled by the sudden appearance of a trio of survivors.

One of the other survivors gestured with his firearm. "Put all your guns down. Put them all down. You know how it is, hard times and all that. Can't trust anyone almost." Jay and his comrades found this more than generous. Most survivors shot first and asked questions later. They dropped their weapons quickly. The leader of the new group of survivors nodded with a smile. "Now, if you all want to live, get on your knees and put your hands behind your heads very slowly." They knelt on the cracked concrete and obeyed.

The leader hopped out of the window to the sidewalk, his boots crunching on the broken glass as he approached Jay's group. "I can't really trust y'all too much . . . Y'all could be murderers for all I know . . . " He turned to one of the other two survivors with him. "What do we do with them?"

The other man -- stout and red-faced -- blinked a few times and gave a crooked grin as a sly look crept across his face. "These people? This should be fun . . . "

Liza cast a worried sidelong glance at Jay, but he seemed pretty calm.

--

The Pastor sighed as footsteps pounded down the hall of the small house near the side of what had once been an interstate in what had once been a state of the USA. The Pastor had politely knocked on the boarded-up door of the house, he had seen someone peek through the peephole cut in the door and then the footsteps had run away. The sinners inside recognized his face, apparently, for he could hear someone shouting inside that they all had to get away right now. The cold-blooded killer shook his head good-naturedly and then he stepped back and began kicking repeatedly at the wood of the door with his heavy boot. Wood splinters sprang everywhere until the Pastor finally broke through a Pastor-sized hole in the door and entered the house, inhaling the scent of sinners. It smelled like sex and cheap beer. It didn't matter; they were going to have the privelege of meeting the Pastor's divine bullets.

"Don't be frightened," the Pastor yelled, his voice booming through the house. "This experience will be therapeutic for all involved."

The sixteen men of the safehouse leaned out of doors from all directions and opened fire, and a full-scare firefight broke out in the confines of the house. The Pastor ducked down on one knee and leveled his Desert Eagle. The first shot missed, blowing a hole through the door jamb by one man's face. The Pastor breathed out calmly and adjusted his aim and squeezed the trigger. The survivor shrieked as the bullet tore through his left thigh and he fell out into plain view, writhing on the floor. The Pastor put a bullet into his brain and fired off three rounds at the other men rapidly before advancing towards them. He fired two rounds into the chest of one man and threw back his head and laughed at the violently red splash of blood that sprayed from the sinner's body. His laughter was cut off as a bullet struck him in the shoulder of his concealed body armor, and he brought up the Desert Eagle and the survivor that had fired at him toppled, shot twice in the chest as well. Another man was shot in the stomach before the remaining ten survivors retreated up the stairs of the safehouse towards the second floor where the women and children were situated, with the Pastor in hot pursuit.

He aimed the Desert Eagle up the stairs at the last man in the line of retreating defenders and shot him down like a dog, four bullets to the back, before reloading and stomping up the stairs after the others, intent on continuing his insane killing spree. He entered the second floor and ducked as a shotgun blast hit the wall where his head had been a second before. The Pastor calmly fired one shot into his opponent's head at pointblank range, and two other men were hit multiple times before dying. The final six attempted to surrender, but the Pastor just walked by, calmly shooting each of them at point-blank range before entering the nursery where the women cowered helplessly with their children. Shots rang out rapidly and then the Pastor exited the nursery, reloading his Desert Eagle with a grin on his face, obviously pleased with himself.

His female protegee stood at the top of the stairs. She had entered after him, observing the way he battled, as she had been instructed to do. "Killing women and children?" she asked with her lips trembling in horror. "I don't know if I could do that."

The Pastor smiled gently and kissed her softly. "It's not your choice, my dear. You must take into consideration that they are sinners against the Lawwwd. It's a stroke of luck for them that I exist to send them down to the depths of Hell with Satan himself. I'm just setting the example for you to continue in my stead when one of these damned sinners eventually sends me up to be with my Lawwwwd." The Pastor's face clouded in anger. "That little whore sinner and the Rider came closer to killing me than anyone ever has. They will be the next to die. I promise that."

He left and the woman followed reluctantly. They burned the house behind them.

--

Jay stared defiantly at his interrogator, blood streaming from his nose. "What, is this some kind of punishment for all the loving I gave your mother last night?"

The big man slammed his fist into Jay's jaw again and the tied-up Rider reeled back from the force of the blow. The interrogator hit him again then grinned widely. "You don't speak unless spoken to. I ask the questions around here, do you understand?" His knee piledrived into Jay's belly twice, and he waited for the Rider to answer. When Jay finally choked out an affirmative, the interrogator seemed satisfied that he'd wiped the smart-aleck look off of Jay's younger face. He also seemed very satisfied by the blooming bruise on Jay's jaw. He sat back, taking a sip of coffee and observing his victim.

"That was kind of nice," Jay croaked, panting just a little. "Maybe we should hook up again next Saturday night, baby." He grunted as the interrogator laid the coffee aside and smashed a fist into his belly . . .

"Wipe that stupid look off your face," the bigger man growled. "The boss really doesn't care what I do to you. And that includes using these." He held up pliers and grinned, rubbing the pliers menacingly over Jay's puffed-up lip.

"You're such a sissy," Jay taunted, spitting a wad of bloody saliva onto the ground at the man's feet. "Fight me like a man. Untie me, and let's rumble, big boy." His face was red with anger and he had the murderous smile on his face that he always had right before people died. Right before a lot of people died.

"You're not a problem at all," the interrogator replied arrogantly, and undid the ropes. Jay took the man's beefy arm immediately and twisted it painfully before kicking him in the chest, knocking him stumbling backwards to land on his back on the ground. He slammed his fist into the interrogator's stubbled jaw and then smiled as he took the pistol from the holster on the man's left hip. He stepped back and -- predictably -- his former captor turned and tried to flee desperately. Two bullets struck his upper back and he toppled, then a third bullet blew his head off. Jay stepped over his body and headed further into the base of the survivors that had captured Jay's group.

As a precaution, two guards had been placed outside the door to the room Jay was being interrogated in. Jay opened the door, firing point-blank. Casually stepping over those bodies as well and retrieving pistol ammunition from them and reloading, Jay took in his surroundings calmly. It looked like he had been interrogated in one of the back storerooms of a J.C. Penneys, and as he got further into the base, he discovered he was right. What kind of whack job group of survivors/bandits would use a J.C. Penneys as their base? That was just idiotic.

He heard a faint scraping sound near another door and headed to it, opening the door and aiming the pistol inside. A man turned around from where he was on top of Arielle on a crude bunk. Arielle sat up as well as much as she could, with the ropes still tying her down. Her eyes were swollen almost shut and she didn't look too good. The bandit's eyes widened in alarm and he reached for his own pistol lying on the table nearby. Jay's bullet ripped through him and he toppled, dead in an instant. Jay put another bullet through the back of his head and then he approached, averting his eyes from Arielle and untying her quickly. She grabbed her clothes nearby and hurriedly dressed, arming herself with the man's pistol and then kicking his dead body, hatred gleaming in her swollen eyes.

As they hurried through the rest of the base, Arielle was crying unashamedly and Jay didn't blame her. He just hoped that they hadn't done the same things to Liza. If they had . . . Jay gritted his teeth silently. If they had, they were all going to die.

Jay and Arielle burst through the door of the last room that they hadn't checked, and saw Daniel and Liza tied up against a wall, being interrogated and beaten by the three original bandits that they had first met, out in the center of the town. The three bandits turned, expecting to see some of their own people, and instead saw two of the people they thought were supposed to be tied up, aiming guns at them with murderous looks on their faces. One man was shot in the chest right off, but the other two dived to the ground and returned fire with their own handguns. The second one was shot six times by Arielle, who had turned into a one-woman killing machine with her fury.

The last man, the stout and red-faced one from before, crouched in the middle of the blood-stained floor and gazed pleadingly at Jay. "Please. Please!! I can lead you to the other bases. You could have weapons, food . . . You could free all the other people that the other bases have imprisoned. You could be a hero, Rider."

Jay looked to where Arielle was untying Liza and Daniel, but he was really looking only at Liza. She shrugged a single shoulder and smiled, and she was beautiful even with her lip bleeding badly. Jay turned back to the cringing coward kneeling before him. "Where is the first base?"

"In a supermarket," the man replied instantly, eager to please and not die. "On West Ave. I can lead you--"

Jay cut him off. "We'll just get another prisoner from that place to tell us where the next one is. You, however . . . You are going to die. I don't like you." Jay shot him three times.

He headed towards Liza, and kissed her hard on the mouth, not even caring about the smeared blood, just wanting to be close to her. Because as soon as they could get organized again . . . they were heading to West Avenue.


	11. Rolfe and Dora

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jay broke the kiss reluctantly after a long, sensual moment and gazed around sternly at the battered group of survivors that he had somehow managed to gain informal leadership of. "Let's get out of here, dammit. This place stinks like somebody just shot a bunch of bandits." He grinned mirthlessly.

The others nodded in agreement and they filed outside, limping and hobbling like old people from the wounds and beatings they had all gathered over the past few days and hours. Jay's entire body ached and he felt like if he layed down, he would never wake up. The adrenaline was the only thing that kept him running, actually. They had to find a place to hole up for the night and reorganize before they tried to take on the next group of survivors/bandits at the supermarket. They were all aching and they felt like they could barely walk another step, let alone run another inch, but they started running anyway, down the street and away from the supermarket. They ran right around the corner and came to a dead stop as they saw the bullet-riddled and shattered glass front doors of the Dappington Police Department.

Jay considered gravely for a few seconds, and then he nodded and limped on towards the shattered doors, and his group followed. Jay entered first, since he had the only weapon (the pistol he had taken) and aimed around cautiously as the others came in after him. They were all so ragged and filthy that even honest, good-hearted survivors would have shot them on sight and mistaken them for zombies. So they were taking no chances.

A few bodies were lying crumpled in the lobby of the station, with bullet holes in their heads, obviously 'deanimated' zombies, as Jay liked to call them. It looked like there had been a mass undead assault on the station, and judging by the lack of live cops (meaning none) Jay felt that it was a safe assumption that the cops had either lost the battle or had fled. Then he remembered the scene at the barricades on the outskirts of town weeks ago and his stomach churned sickeningly. The cops were definitely all dead . . . But maybe the armory was still full . . . Before he could think more about the armory, Arielle sighed loudly and sat on the check-in counter of the station, looking dead tired and traumatized.

"I've got to take a break," she panted.

"Would you hurry?" Daniel asked impatiently, in a tired, annoyed voice. He was tired, too. He didn't seem to care about what Arielle had gone through. "We can't afford to wait two more days for you to sit on the counter there. We've gotta get a move on. Those bandits aren't going to just go away, darling."

"Fuck you," Arielle snarled.

"Fuck ME?" Daniel asked incredulously, then snorted in tired amusement. "Fuck YOU, you sick dyke."

Jay wasn't paying attention to the silly argument; he was crouching on the blood-stained floor and listening carefully with his ear against a door that apparently led further into the station. He turned to the others. "Shut the fuck up, you imbeciles. Let me listen in peace for a moment." Everyone quieted down, and Jay listened for a moment longer and then turned to the others again. "It's just an educated guess, but I'd say we've got a few rogue survivors right behind this door. They were whispering to themselves. They apparently know that we're in the lobby, because of the bickering between you two." He cast an annoyed glance at Arielle and Daniel, who looked away, ashamed. "These rogue survivors were whispering about what they were going to do. They sounded like kids, almost." Jay smiled and gripped their only weapon -- the pistol -- tightly. "If they come through that door shooting, it's on like Donkey Kong, I can promise you guys that."

--

The Pastor dismounted off of his horse and knelt on the ground, quietly studying something on the ground while his apprentice sat on her own horse nearby.

"Where are we?" she asked, clearly anxious to keep going.

The Pastor turned away from the marks on the ground and looked at her, and arched an eyebrow. "The two sinners we're tracking passed through here almost two weeks ago." He smiled heartlessly. "They apparently didn't think anyone was tracking them, because they made no attempt to cover their tracks -- little would it help them, because I am quite good at tracking . . . but still, no attempt at all . . . Their arrogance will cost them dearly . . . " He looked very pleased with himself as he got back on the horse. "You know this area, woman. Where is the nearest town?"

His apprentice pointed. "Thirty-five miles south."

The Pastor nodded decisively and kicked his horse into a gallop as he pulled a Marlboro Red from his pocket and lit up carefully. "Then we're wasting time sitting here chatting, my girl."

--

Rolfe was a non-believer, but the teenager still hoped whatever divine being was up there liked him, because he and his former classmate, a girl named Dora, were about to bang open a door and rush out and fight some survivors in the lobby of the police station. They thought these survivors were bandits, and they knew they could take on bandits with the two shotguns they had. Little did they know, these particular survivors weren't bandits, had only good intentions at heart, and only had a pistol. But also, little did they know, these survivors were deadlier than all the bandits put together.

Something made Rolfe reconsider right before his dumb eighteen-year-old ego could force him to kick open the door and rush into a firefight he couldn't win. He took a deep breath and then yelled to the survivors on the other side of the door. "We've got nine men with assault rifles back here. I'm not making this up or bluffing. It's true. So . . . you just . . . you just better back off and go away. This is our place, and we'll fight and die for it if we have to! Go away! Just leave!"

He had just finished his little shouted speech when the door banged open and he found a lean, blond-haired young man barely older than himself, with eyes like cold chips of blue ice, staring at him over the barrel of a pistol which was aimed at Rolfe's right eye. Rolfe swallowed hard and dropped the shotgun. Dora wordlessly did the same and they both put their hands up.

"Kids these days," Jay tssked. "A liar is a terrible thing, my boy."

"Go to hell." Dora spat at Jay's feet. "Fucking bandit scum."

Jay grinned, his bloody lip standing out like a sore thumb. "You see, me and my friends are pretty banged up right now and . . . " His grin suddenly turned into a snarl and he began yelling and waving the pistol threateningly as he did so. "WE NEED THIS FUCKING PLACE. SO STOP FUCKIN' AROUND!" Dora and Rolfe cringed. Breathing deeply, Jay managed another grin. "Now, for the last time, are you gonna cooperate or do I have to actually shoot one of you?" The two survivors nodded slowly to show they were going to comply, and Jay's grin widened. "Alright, alright. Daniel, get their shotties."

Daniel came forward and grabbed up the pair of dropped shotguns and relieved the two prisoners of their shotgun shells, of course, and then he blinked and thought of something, turning to Jay, who was still aiming the pistol at the prisoners. "Um, O Fearless Leader?" he asked sarcastically. "If the armory is 'presumably' full, then why are these two dumbshits only using scatterguns?"

Rolfe lied. "Armory's empty. Looters must have raided it." In reality, he had hidden the former contents of the armory, and he wouldn't tell a soul until he had to.

Jay sighed angrily. "That's just fucking great. What the fuck are we gonna do now? Go fight the entire supermarket full of bandits with a pistol and two shotguns? We are fucked."

Liza came up beside him and gave him a peck on the cheek, not even noticing Arielle's traumatized but jealous look she cast at her. "You'll think of something, baby. You always do. In the meantime . . . " She glanced at Rolfe and Dora curiously. "Let's go upstairs to a safer room, and hear these guys' story, shall we?"

Rolfe was a little uncertain when he started his story, but he got more comfortable as he continued through it. They were all sitting up in one of the upstairs former interrogation rooms. Jay was quietly smoking and staring out the window and the others -- Arielle, Daniel, Liza and Dora -- were hungrily chowing down on some of the supplies that Rolfe and Dora had managed to gather up in their months of staying at the station.

The story went like this, anyways. Rolfe had committed an unprovoked attack upon a younger, smaller freshman outside of the high school on the day of the outbreak, right after school. After he had beaten the kid senseless, he had tried running away but the cops were already there and he had been brought in for assault and the injured kid had been airlifted to a hospital. Dora had also been brought in as an accomplice because she had also kicked the victim in the side of the head as he lay already bleeding and begging from Rolfe's assault. They had only been in their separate interrogation rooms waiting for their parents for half an hour before cops starting running around and panicking and yelling about how there was a large group of rioters approaching the station.

A lot of cops, including the ones that had been guarding Rolfe and Dora in their separate rooms, ran outside to confront the looters. Rolfe, his hands still cuffed behind his back, had watched it through a window. He had been just as surprised as anybody when gunshots began banging out and bodies starting falling. He expected the rioters to turn and run, but they just kept coming. He heard a lot of screaming, and saw a cop go down, tripping over a dead body, and one of the rioters took multiple shots to the chest but then still kenlt and started to bite him while he was down. The most horrific thing the teen saw though, was his father. Amongst the rioters. Chewing on a severed arm like it was barbecue chicken.

The cops took a step back, took another, and then retreated completely into the police station, and the 'battle' continued in there. A sweaty, grime-covered officer had freed Rolfe and Dora of their cuffs and had told them to hide. He had freed the other convicts, who simply had escaped out the back door, including one tall man who had been holding a Bible and . . .

At this point in the story, Jay stopped Rolfe, his eyes gleaming in intense interest. "Wait, a tall man holding a Bible, you said?"

Rolfe blinked with confusion before nodding. "Yeah, he was kind of creepy . . . "

Jay shrugged. "What was he in for?"

"Stealing a pack of Marlboro Reds from the local gas station."

Jay began laughing hard, hysterically. He had been expecting something more major. The Pastor was coming back to his hometown. And he was most certainly going to head for the station. There was always sinners at the police station, of course.


	12. The End

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Pastor smiled as he leapt his horse over the police barricade that blocked most of the entrances into the town where he had once lived: Dappington. He was coming to unleash biblical justice upon those two sinners that had come so close to killing him . . . and any other sinners that got in his way. The odor of decaying flesh was so strong, that the Pastor almost toppled off his horse. There was some heavy heathen activity in this town. The Pastor quietly loosened the strap on the hip holster holding his Desert Eagle . . . just in case. Riding beside him, his female apprentice did the same. Bullet holes were everywhere, and the Pastor smiled again because he knew why. Wherever the Rider and his whore went, there were always bullet holes. Everywhere. And further up the road, there was the police station. Surely they would have went there for weapons?

The psychopathic killer rode on with his apprentice at his side.

--

Jay stared vigilantly out the second-story window of the police department, holding the pistol in his lap. He was waiting for the Pastor. He had been waiting for him ever since Rolfe had let slip that Dappington was basically the gunman's hometown. The Pastor was a psychopath, but a very smart psychopath. He was going to come to the police station very soon. Shit, maybe he had even tracked them there. He didn't hear Rolfe approach, but he heard the boy speak.

"You better give me a gun," the younger man said harshly. "If some maniac is coming to kill us, I wanna be able to shoot back and have a slim chance at all."

"Fuck that," Jay replied simply. "We haven't got enough guns to supply everyone. But I have got enough to supply my little group -- me, Arielle, Daniel, and Liza. So . . . you and your little girlfriend are fucked."

Rolfe sighed, a grimace on his face. He did not want to say what he was about to say, but he did anyway. It was the only way to get guns and have even a slim chance of survival. "That Pastor guy will be here soon enough, right? So I figure we might need some more firepower to hold off the crazy fucker and maybe even kill him, eh? . . . Then, after that, you've gotta go fuck up some bandits at a supermarket, too, so you need some serious cheese. " Jay stared at him suspiciously and then nodded, wanting Rolfe to continue, and the boy did. "I took all the stuff from the armory and hid it in one of the bathroom stalls. Bulletproof vests, pistols, pistol ammo, shotguns, shotgun ammo, ten M-16s and a bunch of full mags for them, and one of those MP5 submachine gun things, with a bunch of mags for it, too." Jay stood up, obviously wanting Rolfe to lead him to the weapons, and the kid nodded eagerly and led him down to the first floor and to the left.

Jay opened the stall door and grinned. He was happier than he had been in a very long time. "Marvelous." Let's see what the Pastor thinks when he's facing six desperate survivors with assault rifles and wearing bullet-proof vests, Jay thought with a vicious glee.

--

The Pastor stopped his horse in the middle of the street in front of the police station, idly shoving a heathen away with a kick to the face as he surveyed the seemingly empty place. The Rider was a cunning bastard, he knew, and he wasn't going to underestimate him. He dismounted and turned to his female apprentice, who was following his example and getting off her horse. He put his finger to his lips, signalling her to be quiet.

"Wait right outside," he whispered in her ear. "You are far more valuable than me. If I do not return, that means I am dead and I'm with the Lawd. You carry on my holy work, you hear? Do the right thing. You've been chosen to be the next hand of God." The Pastor smiled grimly. "Either way, the Rider will be dead by morning. I swear by my Lawd that he will be dead, even if I have to die to ensure that."

--

Daniel stared quietly out the window at the two horse-shaped figures outside in the street and the two human-shaped figures standing beside them apparently conversing in whispers. "It's showtime," Daniel told the others, pulling the charging handle on his own M-16 to load the weapon.

"Are you sure it's the Pastor?" Liza asked anxiously as she loaded her rifle, as well. "We shouldn't ambush an innocent survivor . . . "

Jay pushed Daniel aside roughly and stared out at the large dark shape talking to the smaller one. "Yes, that's definitely the Pastor. I'd stake my life on it." He smiled predatorily.

"I'm so scared," Dora said suddenly, and everyone turned to look at her with raised eyebrows. "I don't want to die like this." She was holding her rifle in shaking hands and staring straight ahead.

Rolfe kissed her cheek tenderly, and she looked up, surprised. "Everybody's gotta die sometime," he told her with a wink. "Besides, it's one fucking guy. What's the big fucking deal? What can one guy with a handgun do against six people with assault rifles and body armor?"

Jay smiled. He alone knew that the Pastor had body armor, too. He remembered the confrontation at the farmhouse. This was not going to be an easy fight.

--

Glass crushed underfoot as the Pastor pushed through the front doors of the police station, his Desert Eagle already drawn and aiming around in the darkness of the lobby carefully. He was taking no chances when it came to the Rider, because that little whoremonger was crafty as hell and as good with a gun as the Pastor himself. But the Pastor was jumpy and sweaty, and that was strange because he usually was calm as can be. A rat scuttled by in the shadows and he fired at the sound, the bullet smashing up pieces of the tile floor. The Pastor laughed nervously and continued on his way, up the stairs slowly towards the second floor.

What he didn't expect however, was Daniel unloading a full magazine towards him from his position at the top of the stairs. The Pastor screamed in pain as he was battered backwards by a lot of impacts to the torso and he climbed over the rail and jumped down, grunting as he landed. Daniel took the oppurtunity to drop the spent magazine out and load a new one in, and the other survivors grouped around or near the top of the stairs congratulated him grimly and asked him if he had 'killed the sumbitch'.

Daniel turned his head to answer, and that was when the Pastor darted back into sight at the bottom of the stairs and fired two precisely aimed shots. Daniel was shot through the right side of the chest, and he crumpled backwards, firing off a burst from his assault rifle instinctively into the wall and ceiling. The Pastor crowed in triumph and started running up the stairs, thinking he had killed the Rider. Then Liza appeared at the top of the stairs, her tear-stained face looking more angry than ever as she knelt beside Daniel's writhing form and fired several shots down at the massive gunman. A bullet shattered his right elbow and the Pastor yowled in agony, switching the Deagle to his left hand and firing randomly up at Liza as he backed down the stairs one step at a time. Liza took a bullet to the knee, smashing her backward and shrieked as well, and they both stopped shooting and grabbed at their wounds at the same time.

And then that was enough of the trading fire. It was going to get hot and heavy and close-range now. Jay and Rolfe and Dora and Arielle stepped over their friends at the top of the stairs and came down shooting. The Pastor was hit twice in the chest, one of the bullets penetrating. He would have went down in a heap if he hadn't the power of the Lawd behind him, the Pastor knew. Instead of falling, he pulled the trigger of the Deagle in his left hand and a bullet broke the wrist of Dora and she screamed and fell to one knee on the stairs.

"You're running out of friends," the Pastor shouted in a mixture of pain and glee. "Just you and me, Rider. Come on, huh?" Rolfe, Arielle and Jay kept coming without answering, firing controlled three-round bursts. The shots were poorly aimed but they drove the Pastor back away from the bottom of the steps. "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE, RIDER, YOU BLASPHEMIST PIECE OF MANURE!" The Pastor charged forth despite his three torso gunshot wounds and shattered elbow.

The three survivors shot him four times in the chest before he reached them. One bullet grazed his calf muscle and he stumbled and nearly fell, but that just gave him a better angle as he tackled Jay hard into the wall and they both fell, the other two survivors dropping their rifles and trying to pull the Pastor off as his shrieking laughter echoed eerily through the nearly empty police station.

Blood gushed from Jay's gushed nose as he tried to fight off the larger man. He jammed his fingernails into the Pastor's eyes and tried to force him off but the man was fanatical and he battered Jay downwards again and again and tried to rip his body armor off, the Rider's head bouncing off the hard metallic stairs each time. Rolfe kicked the Pastor in the back of the head, trying to get him off of Jay, but the massive bear of a man slammed his meaty fist into Rolfe's gut and the boy stumbled and fell down hard, rolling down the stairs. Arielle stood nearby, aiming a police-issue Glock but unable to take a shot because she might hit Jay.

Then, there was a dull boom and Jay's eyes widened. The Pastor grinned in triumph and got up, holding the Deagle in his hand and staring down at the gaping gunshot wound in Jay's gut. He turned to Arielle, who was staring at him and trembling, and laughed, approaching her. She dropped the Glock and fell to her knees, pleading for mercy. Seeing Jay get shot seemed to have sapped all her courage.

Another shot rang out and the Pastor's eyes widened exactly as Jay's had seconds before. Dora smiled through the pain from her position further up the stairs. She was aiming a handgun with her good hand. Even with her wrist broken, the girl was a good shot with either hand. The Pastor knew right away that something was terribly wrong as he fell to his knees, his body going numb. He didn't know that he had been shot through the forehead. He stared up at the ceiling and then fell onto his side, and he learned whether or not all that he had believed so fervently for so many years was true. The Pastor was dead.

Arielle stepped over the body hurriedly, tears streaming down her face as she knelt beside Jay. He was rolling side to side in pain. "I don't think we're ready to lose you, Jay," Arielle sobbed, almost begging. "Even with that religious nut dead, we're not ready. We've gotta fight those bandits. We can't do it without you, Jay." He had become like an annoying older brother to her. Annoying yes, but still, a brother nonetheless.

"It's only fair," Jay grunted, his eyes wild with pain. "I've killed so many people . . . To be honest, I hoped that the Pastor would be the one to kill me . . . An honorable death against a worthy opponent . . . " He stared at the dead body of his opponent and smiled gently, even though blood was still gushing from his nose and he had a massive gunshot wound. Then he looked up the stairs at Liza, who was attempting to tend to Daniel's equally dangerous wound. Jay's eyes softened with love and affection as they caressed Liza's eyes. It was his way of saying goodbye to her without having to give an awkward speech.

"He said he'd be dead by morning." Arielle turned towards where the voice had come from, and saw a woman with long blond hair standing there offering a pistol butt first to Rolfe, apparently surrendering. "I was his apprentice, you know?" The woman looked down at the Pastor, disgusted. "Apprentice, my ass. I just didn't want the psycho fucker to kill me. My name's Edwina."

While the others came forward to carefully inspect Edwina for concealed weapons, limping from their wounds, only Liza seemed to notice Jay laying there on the floor in a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs, staring at nothing, his eyes slowly glazing over. Jason 'Jay' Franklin, also known as the Rider, was dead. At the start, there had been a rider, a steed, and a girl. And now there was just a girl.

Liza started to cry uncontrollably but stopped herself. There'd be time to cry later. Right now, her task was to patch up herself and the other survivors . . . and then they were going to take out the bandits at the supermarket and then . . . who knows what came next? Maybe they could free the entire country! Elizabeth 'Liza' Michaels stared down at Jay and whispered three words, blowing him a kiss. Maybe she was Liza Franklin. She smiled through the tears and looked down at her stomach, rubbing it gently. Jay never missed.

**The End**


End file.
